DescriptionIn this dissertation, I examined three research questions related to banking in emerging markets. First, I explore barriers that affect access and ownership of a formal financial account in emerging markets. Second, I study the impacts of ownership structure on banking performance. And third, I study the associated impact of board diversity on bank performance. The first research question addresses a key development issue with systemic impacts to economic growth. Using a novel rich dataset from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (The BMGF), which cover nine emerging markets (Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria), I examine the social barriers to access to financial services. Analysis found that women are associated with reduced likelihood of being financially included—in terms of both accessing and owning a formal financial account—under the presence of only conventional banking system in all countries on the sample. Both rural residency and poor household also associated with lower likelihood of being financially included. Compared to the subset of population whom already accessing or owning a conventional bank account, digital branchless bank reach more women, more rural residents, and poorer household. However, if we compare the subset of population whom becomes financially included through digital branchless banking to the population that are still unbanked, we see repeated pattern of exclusion. Analysis also show that while digital branchless bank does reach more rural and poorer household, there are still women, rural residents, and poorer household that are left behind and remain unbanked. In essay 2, I study the impacts of ownership structure on bank performance. Utilizing a novel dataset of Indonesian banks mined and parsed from the Indonesian Financial Authority’s banking quarterly financial report, I unmask the oft-unaddressed heterogeneity of owners. I add to the agency theory literature by differentiating the ownership effects of financial corporation, non-financial corporation, conglomerates, and government ownership. Past research argued that foreign owners are better endowed and better experienced, and that foreign ownership leads to better performance. Yet, data analysis reveal that in Indonesia, domestic private ownership is associated with better economic performance. So, being a foreign owner can be a form of disadvantage especially in an emerging market. In essay 3, I look at the relationship between board gender diversity and banks’ performance. Data on board of director were obtained from the Indonesian Financial Services Authority. Next, I parsed and restructured the data while assigning gender based on the name of the board of director. The resulting analysis provides an empirical evidence that increase in gender diversity of the board of director is positively associated with firm performance. This finding also corroborates Konrad (2006) critical mass argument which stated that having just one or a few women directors may not be meaningful and may just lead to tokenism—a situation in which women directors are treated as token instead of being given authority that can lead to impact on performance.